Meta to build datacenter in Temple

saw this on the poliboard.

not happy about this one at all. consider this as me throwing a F16 grenade into F45.

Tell me more c-jags. What are you upset about, tax breaks? Get your rant on.

washburn321 said:

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Tell me more c-jags. What are you upset about, tax breaks? Get your rant on.

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I'm all about growth. I'm all about more jobs.

Most people I meet that come from California are great and don't have a desire to bring their politics here. That's not to say that their politics are wrong and Bell County's are correct. Far from it.

But I don't care for what's become of Austin and their growth. They've sacrificed a lot of their culture and property taxes to become the Hill Country Silicon Valley. That's fine for them, but not what Temple is.

Our growth and theirs is pretty lined up at 20-30% over the last 20 years. But the jump from 800k to 1MM is very different than a jump from 50k-80k+.

I specifically like that our I35 profile is pretty bland and most people I meet from Austin thinks that Temple/Belton is boring. It's a great town and I love living here and raising my family here.

I started running Pepper Creek a few year back and you used to be able to run all up and down that area and be completely alone the entire time. Now if I run from Pepper Creek to 317 I'm probably passing almost 1000 homes.

Also, Meta was and is heavily involved in elections and politics. Whether I agree with those politics or not, I'm not a fan of an overtly politically involved company getting tax breaks.

I understand that any of those can be hypocritical positions depending on the company and where it moves and admit as much.

That's enough ranting for now. Probably laid it on a little thick for the sake of livening up the board.

I like it and can see all your points made. Agreed on the political part of things. It will be interesting to see on this... while the labor to build will support approximately 1250 jobs, the long term job outlook for the datacenter is 100 people. I wonder how much of a long-term impact it actually has on the community? 100 people averaging a $90k salary does seem impactful. It would be interesting to see how many actually end up living in Temple.

I think more than anything it's a signal to other companies that Temple is and continues to be a good place to invest. You know Meta spent a ton of money analyzing what they felt was the best location in the state. I could see this creating a snowball where we see more industry investment in Temple/Belton than what has been the norm.

Growth is good and all but we have Fort Hood, WalMart distribution, McClane, Carpenter, J Welden, PFG, Reynolds, Acer, and BS&W. We're not hurting in that area and that's a lot of industry for Belton/Temple. Not saying we as a town should be content with that.

I know some wicked smart tech people in the area, but I don't think of Temple as a hub for that. I guess my concern stems from Austin deciding to go that route and what it's become.

To clarify... when I said "I like it", that was in reference to your arguments. I 100% agree that we don't want this corridor, including Waco, to become Austin. Austin... stay Austin.

I will tell you that if you go to Hill County (Hillsboro), you are seeing all wind farms and solar farms up there....really interesting how much of that stuff is going in up that way.

Temple hasn't done any wind investment (but based on the last 3 weeks we should.)

There is a whole ton of solar east of Temple now in the Rogers area.

Good article on all of that....I'm not a big proponent of solar because of all it's doing to the land

The Solar Star project in California boasts 1.7 million panels spread out over 3,000 acres. Its gargantuan scale points to an uncomfortable fact for the industry: a natural gas power plant produces the same amount of energy on just 122 acres https://t.co/AMHVL2imoR 1/6 pic.twitter.com/jCWa9cl4EU

— Reuters (@Reuters) April 7, 2022

Belton ISD has a bond to vote on